COMPATIBLE is an almost mystic parameter. It has a default setting for each release. But if you try to find more information what it really does, you won’t be very happy. And in reply to my previous blog post about whether you need to change COMPATIBLE when you apply an RU, I received the following question: When and how should you change COMPATIBLE? What does COMPATIBLE do? To find an answer to this question, I consulted the documentation at first. And I found this: COMPATIBLE Setting COMPATIBLE ensures that new features do not write data formats or structures to disk…
Tag Archives: Oracle 18c
Oracle 18c Express Edition (XE) for Windows is available
Oracle 18c Express Edition (XE) for Windows is available for download as of now. Oracle XE 18c on other platforms is available since November 2018. As of now you can download the Windows version as well. Use the Quick Start guide which explains the installation and how to connect to the database. General availability of Oracle Database 18c Express Edition on Windows! Whether you are a developer, a DBA, a data scientist, an educator, or just curious about databases, Oracle Database 18c Express Edition (XE) is the ideal way to get started. You will get the same powerful Oracle Database…
How long will Oracle Database 12.2 be supported?
This question sounds very simple: How long will Oracle Database 12.2 be supported? Right? But I learned at a customer site recently that the information about the support periods for Oracle 12.2 may puzzle people sometimes. Hence I thought some clarification may be useful. Lifetime Support Policy Brochure First of all, when you have a look into the Lifetime Support Policy brochure the answer you’ll read there is: Premier Support until March 2023 Extended Support until March 2026 But this doesn’t give you any distinction between Oracle 12.2.0.1, Oracle 18c and Oracle 19c. These three releases fall under the Oracle…
Happy New Year 2019 to all of you!
Happy New Year 2019 to all of you! And thanks for reading the blog. And thanks also for the warm feedback you gave me in the past 20 months since I started this blog on a new platform. I wish you all a very good start into the new year. If you wonder why I post this while the year is already 7 days old, we Germans have a lot of holidays – and this season it was pretty attractive to take two weeks off with just spending 5 vacation days. Hence, my working year 2019 starts more or less…
Premier Support Extension for Oracle 19c – and more
Wait a bit. Oracle Database 19c is not out yet (only in beta right now) but how can we initiate a Premier Support Extension for Oracle 19c already? Well, Oracle 12.2.0.1, Oracle 18c and Oracle 19c all together sail under the cover of the “Oracle 12.2 Release Family” and hence have a common support frame. What has been announced? The single-source-of-truth MOS Note:742060.1 got updated. Roy tweeted about it already. And the major change in the note is the extension of the Premier Support for Oracle 19c until March 2023. That is one year more than it was before. And…
Direct INSERTs into HCC tables may be slower since Oracle 12.2
I work with several customers at the moment on their Oracle 12.2/18c “go live” projects. And one of these customers encountered a strange issue when comparing Oracle 11.2.0.4 to Oracle 12.2.0.1/18.3.0: Direct INSERTs into HCC tables may be slower since Oracle 12.2. Actually in this particular case, significantly slower. Read below why this can happen and how the workarounds look like. Hybrid Columnar Compression There’s a lot of material to read and study about Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC). With HCC we store the same column for a group of rows together. The data block does not store data in row-major…
To which release should you upgrade to? Plus: Extended Support?
A few days ago I blogged about the Current Support Status for Oracle Database Releases. And you’ve sent several questions to me. Some asked about clarification to which release should you upgrade to? Plus: Extended Support questions were quite frequent. So let me clarify this previous blog post a bit. To which release should you upgrade to? A few weeks ago we initiated global communication to all customers who had opened an SR within the past 3 years explaining to which release you should upgrade to. Just in case you haven’t seen this communication, I will give you more details…
New Oracle Database Upgrade Lab for Oracle 18.3.0
New Oracle Database Upgrade Lab for Oracle 18.3.0 Our new and updated Oracle Database Upgrade Hands-On Lab for Oracle 18.3.0 is finally live and can be downloaded via this link: Download Database Upgrade 18.3.0 Hands-On Lab What’s new? Of course, Oracle 18.3.0 is inside to upgrade to. But we changed the entire instructions set a bit. We included a simple load generator. And we added way more performance stuff. And of course fallback. As soon as Oracle 18.4.0 becomes available, patching will be included in the instructions as well. Everybody should have used OPatch at least once 🙂 What’s in…
Oracle 12.2 and higher: Set _cursor_obsolete_threshold to old default
Sometimes development groups change default parameter settings because it fits well for a specific feature. This has happened with _cursor_obsolete_threshold in Oracle Database 12.2. But there’s now an official recommendation for Oracle 12.2 and higher: Set _cursor_obsolete_threshold to old default. What is _cursor_obsolete_threshold? First of all, this is obviously an underscore parameter. And usually the policy is: Don’t change underscore parameters unless either you clearly understand what you are changing. Or unless Oracle Support (or another Oracle authority) advises you to do. We introduced this parameter in Oracle 11.2.0.3 for an issue of growing child cursors. An enhancement request was…
Oracle Database 18c on-prem for MS Windows is available
I know it got delayed a bit. But there’s a good reason for the delay. In addition, my post is a bit late as well but I was on vacation. Anyway, you can download it since Aug 22, 2018. Oracle Database 18c on-prem for MS Windows is available. Oracle Database 18c on-prem for MS Windows is available You can download it from oracle.com and eDelivery: Download Oracle Database 18c from oracle.com Download Oracle Database 18c from eDelivery Start here with the Oracle 18c on Windows Installation Guide. As far as I see, the certification information has not been updated yet…
RMAN Backup Gives RMAN-06091: No Channel Allocated for Maintenance
I really don’t want to turn this blog into an accumulation of issues and flaws. But as I explained many times before, the blog for me is also a way to dump information I likely will need the sooner or later again. Recently I blogged about another RMAN issue in Oracle 12.2.0.1 with traces. This was fixed with the July 2018 RU for Oracle 12.2.0.1. But the issue below about which Piero Ferraz from Brazil alerted me (thanks!!!), happens in exactly this RU. RMAN Backup Gives RMAN-06091: No Channel Allocated for Maintenance This issue gets introduced with the July 2018…
Oracle Multimedia is deprecated in Oracle 18c
While I was writing the blog post about Creating CDBs and non-CDBs with less options I realized that Oracle Multimedia is deprecated in Oracle 18c – but I haven’t mentioned this here yet. Oracle Multimedia is deprecated in Oracle 18c Oracle Multimedia was called Oracle Intermedia a long time ago when we introduced it back in the Oracle 8i days. I don’t know how many people really used it, but it is part of a standard installation if you didn’t explicitly turned it off or deinstalled it. And from Oracle 18c on, Oracle Multimedia is deprecated. Meaning, it won’t develop…
Oracle Database 18.3.0 on SPARC Solaris is available
Usually I don’t post twice on a day, especially not on a Friday and not in the holiday season. But since last night, Aug 2, Oracle Database 18.3.0 on SPARC Solaris is available for download from OTN. Oracle Database 18.3.0 on SPARC Solaris is available You can download it from OTN: https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/index.html And I couldn’t find it on eDelivery – where I find only the 18.1.0 version. But I simply may be not clever enough to use the right search phrase (I used “Oracle Database” as “18” leads to something different). Further Information Oracle Database 18.3.0 on premises is available…
Drop public synonym XMLCONCAT prior to upgrade
Thanks to my team mates, Cindy and Hector, who alerted me on this newly detected issue. When your database has been upgraded from release to release, it could happen that a public synonym XMLCONCAT exists. And before you upgrade to Oracle 12.2.01 or Oracle 18c you must drop this public synonym to avoid upgrade errors. Drop public synonym XMLCONCAT prior to upgrade The public synonym XMLCONCAT in pre-9.2.0.2 Oracle databases pointed to a PL/SQL function of the same name. In 9.2.0.2, this PL/SQL function was changed to a C function.The public synonym was no longer needed nor pointing to a…
Clarification: Support Periods for Oracle 12.2.0.1 and 18c
Monday morning, another way-too-hot July day. Summer is crazy this year in Europe. We all enjoy nice sunny weather but nobody does enjoy a serious drought. Nowhere. While going through my inbox I spot this statement: ““Why should we go to 18.x with support till 2020?“. And this is not an unusual question. But I think I should write a Clarification: Support Periods for Oracle 12.2.0.1 and 18c. I receive plenty of such questions in the past weeks. And actually many from my colleagues. Clarification: Support Periods for Oracle 12.2.0.1 and 18c First of all, your Single Source of Truth…
Oracle 18.3.0 on premises includes 1.4GB patches?
Oracle Database 18.3.0 on premises is available for download on Linux since July 23, 2018. The other ports will follow soon. And via twitter I received a question why Oracle 18.3.0 on premises includes 1.4GB patches? Oracle 18.3.0 on premises includes 1.4GB patches? When you unzip the downloaded database image: then you may discover the following folder .patch_storage of 1.4GB size: [oracle@localhost .patch_storage]$ ls -lrt total 40 drwxr-xr-x. 4 oracle dba 4096 Jul 18 19:39 28090523_Jul_14_2018_00_03_50 drwxr-xr-x. 4 oracle dba 4096 Jul 18 19:40 28090553_Jul_11_2018_19_20_31 drwxr-xr-x. 4 oracle dba 4096 Jul 18 19:41 27923415_Jul_15_2018_10_33_22 drwxr-xr-x. 8 oracle dba 4096 Jul…
Oracle Database 18.3.0 installation on premises
Oracle Database 18.3.0 is available on Linux since July 23, 2018. And I wanted to quickly sneak into the Oracle Database 18.3.0 installation on premises. I did blog about the Oracle 18c installation a few weeks ago but this was a plain 18.1.0. This time I install the 18.3.0 on-prem edition for Linux. Oracle Database 18.3.0 installation on premises Are the any differences between an 18.1.0 and the 18.3.0 installation? No, there aren’t any (at least not anything I recognized). The most important thing: you must unzip the downloaded file into your future destination directory. In my case I unzip:…
ZDLRA ready for Oracle Database 18c
ZDLRA is one of the best acronyms ever. It took me 5+ years to not mix up the sequence of characters 🙂 And even Larry made a joke about the name a while ago at his OOW keynote (I think it was 2016). ZDLRA stands for Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance. And that basically tells you what it is. Hence, it isn’t a bad acronym as it tells you straight forward what it does. Good news: ZDLRA ready for Oracle Database 18c. ZDLRA ready for Oracle Database 18c Why am I writing about this? Some of the customers I’m working…
Long Identifiers in Oracle 12.2 may cause trouble
LONG identifiers are one of the key features in Oracle Database 12.2.0.1. But as I learned the other day, you should be a bit careful when you exchange data between different databases. In certain situations, Long Identifiers in Oracle 12.2 may cause trouble. What are Long Identifiers? Long identifiers get introduced with Oracle Database 12.2.0.1. For ages, you could name a table or a column or a user or a package in Oracle with only 30 byte length. Hence, naming a table TAB_THIS_IS_MY_TABLE_AND_I_LIK is ok (30 byte – 30 characters) but naming it TAB_THIS_IS_MY_TABLE_AND_I_LIKE_IT is not possible as it requires…
_optimizer_ignore_hints is now optimizer_ignore_hints
I’m refreshing our Hands-On Lab for Oracle Database 18c. And as part of a performance evaluation I wanted to set an underscore parameter to ignore all hints my load test tool sets. But then I learned: This does not work anymore as _optimizer_ignore_hints is now optimizer_ignore_hints. We made the underscore obsolete in Oracle Database 18c. _optimizer_ignore_hints is now optimizer_ignore_hints Actually in Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 you can find a long list of obsolete parameters here: Obsolete Parameters in Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 (Nov 10, 2016) To be precise: We obsoleted159 parameters. In addition, in Oracle Database 18c we added an additional 8…
Patching Oracle Database 18.1.0 to 18.2.0 on premises
In this part of my blog post series about upgrading from Oracle 12.2.0.1 to Oracle 18c I’d like to demonstrate patching Oracle Database 18.1.0 to 18.2.0 on premises. A while ago I showed also how to patch from Oracle 18.1.0 to 18.2.0 in the Oracle Cloud. Find the related blog posts here: Deinstalling Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Installing Oracle Database 18.1.0 Patching Oracle 18.1.0 to 18.2.0 Upgrade Oracle 12.2.0.1 to Oracle Database 18c on-premises Patching Oracle Database 18.1.0 to 18.2.0 on premises Before I can start patching to the Release Update Oracle 18.2.0 I need to download the patch and a…
Installing Oracle Database 18c
This blog post about Installing Oracle Database 18c applies to all Oracle 18c releases. I wrote a while ago about one very important change: Oracle Database 18c – Some Important Changes and explained that the installation is now image based. You’ll find other posts as part of my series on how to install and upgrade to Oracle Database 18c here: Deinstalling Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Installing Oracle Database 18.1.0 Patching Oracle 18.1.0 to 18.2.0 Upgrade Oracle 12.2.0.1 to Oracle Database 18c on-premises Installing Oracle Database 18c Oracle Database 18c on-premises is supposed to be generally available with the July 2018 Update….
Upgrade Oracle 12.2.0.1 to Oracle Database 18c on-premises
I’m currently refreshing our Hands-On Lab and will exchange Oracle 12.2.0.1 with Oracle 18.2.0. This blog post series is about how to Upgrade to Oracle 12.2.0.1 to Oracle Database 18c on-premises. There are other blog posts available you may use by yourself if you plan to refresh the lab by yourself until we uploaded a newer version. And it’s actually a good exercise. Deinstalling Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Installing Oracle Database 18.1.0 Patching Oracle 18.1.0 to 18.2.0 Upgrade Oracle 12.2.0.1 to Oracle Database 18c on-premises For Multitenant upgrades from Oracle 12.1.0.2 to Oracle 12.2.0.1 you may read this: Upgrade Everything at…
When you patch, please use UPDATES – and not REVISIONS
I can just repeat what I’m saying not for almost a year: When you patch, please use UPDATES – and not REVISIONS. Updates (or Release Updates – short: RU) and Revisions (or Release Update Revisions – short: RUR) are patch bundles for the Oracle Database since Oracle 12.2.0.1. There are no PSUs (Patch Set Updates) anymore. And Revisions are not the same as PSUs. When you patch, please use UPDATES – and not REVISIONS One of the reasons why we recommend Updates, and not Revisions, simply is: Updates keep you more current whereas Revisions will let you miss a lot…
Patching to Oracle 18.2.0 in the Oracle Cloud (OCI Classic)
I was quite surprised when I spotted the Update (RU) Oracle 18.2.0 mid of April in my OCI Classic (DBCS, DBaaS) account. Of course I was thrilled immediately and started the patching to Oracle 18.2.0 in the Oracle Cloud (OCI Classic). Patching to Oracle 18.2.0 in the Oracle Cloud (OCI Classic) The April 2018 Updates (and Bundle Patches and Patch Set Updates for Oracle releases below 12.2) got released on April 17, 2018. You can read more here on how I applied all of them to my Oracle 11.2.0.4, 12.1.0.2 and 12.2.0.1 databases. But I was positively surprised when I…